I think, therefore I am....radical
Posted by Literary on 11th Apr 2011 at 17:37 | Tiny Volcanoes | 0 comments
I think, therefore I am radical. Am I radical? The radical playwright Laurence Wilson certainly has a nice ring to it.
But what is radical? What does it mean?
There are some pretty radical changes going on in Britain right now. The Coalition are radically changing our social systems, such as benefits, public services, and student grants. All in the name of shrinking our deficit. They don’t want us to go the way of Greece, Ireland or Portugal.
Well here’s a radical idea that was in one part of the coalition’s separate manifestos. Get rid of Trident and save trillions. Stop trying to police a world when you can’t even police your own country.
Admit to yourselves what the rest of the world already knows. We are no longer a super power. We don’t need to be one. There are plenty of them already.
Swap warheads for tax credits, nuclear submarines for student loans, no fly zones for new baby grants. Let the French create the no fly zone in Libya on their own, after all they didn’t support us in Iraq; then again most of the British people didn’t support our role in the invasion of Iraq. Here’s another radical idea that I share with many others, make the banks plough their huge profits into social benefits for all the people. Instead of handing out those whacking great bonuses to the CEO’s, use them to build a tram system in the cities and towns that need them.
In its pervasive form Radical means, far-reaching, searching or thoroughgoing, an example of which would be major reorganization of a company.
For me, it means letting go of the past, not to forget the lessons of history, but to reduce our need for nostalgia by constantly creating a future that is exciting, social, inventive, growing, questioning, even debunking.
Stop looking at the world as somehow being in the grip of some Illuminate, or Zionists, or Antichrist, of which you have no power to change, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at the world as an anvil on which we all have a place to shape the future.
Radical City week is coming and shows that deal with radical thoughts and ideologies, await you at the Everyman, Mark Thomas, Almanac and my very own ‘Broken Britain’ satire, Tiny Volcanoes. I say they are radical shows, the people behind them think they are, as do the people commissioning them, but are they? There’s only one way to find out. Come and see for yourself and assert your radical responses to those involved and to those who viewed. Good or bad criticism aside; what happens next and what is my part in it? Is the question we should walk away with it.
Laurence
Laurence Wilson
Playwright, Tiny Volcanoes(2010/11) Lost Monsters (2009), Urban Legend (2004)
Laurence is also one of the writers taking part in Almanac's Radical City - A Happening on Hope Street.
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